Events

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The ClassroomThe Classroom makes its second trip to the west coast for LAABF15, after 6 years at NYABF. This curated series of conversations, workshops, readings and other artist-led programs is also an informal venue for artists, writers and publishers to feature new releases and present their publications, organized by David Senior of the Museum of Modern Art Library. Located in Gallery E.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 29

7:00 – 8:30 pm
Black Radical Imagination Mixtape
Black Radical Imagination is a touring program of visual shorts that delve into the worlds of new media, video art, and experimental narrative curated by Amir George and Erin Christovale. Screening includes Golden Chain (2013) by Adebukola Bodunrin and Ezra Clayton Daniels, Moonrising (2014) by Sanford Biggers and Terence Nance, Split Ends, I Feel Wonderful (2012) by Akosua Adoma Owusu, Get the Bones (2007) by Lauren Kelley, Field Notes (2014) by Vashti Harrison. Presented by Dominica in conjunction with the release of the Black Radical Imagination book, available at Booth G08.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 30

1:00 – 2:00 pm
Lizzi Bougatsos in conversation with Amanda Keeley (EXILE Books) and Johan Kugelberg (Boo Hooray)
Lizzi Bougatsos talks about her first artist’s book Her Perfume Tears, which is co-published by Boo Hooray and EXILE Books. The group will discuss how this collaboration evolved, the process of editing and handling an archive, the history of the book’s content, and what is on the horizon for all parties.

2:00 – 3:00 pmMontage as Collage and Collage as Montage, by Carmen Winant
In tandem with the release of her new book My Life as a Man, Carmen Winant delivers a twenty-minute performative lecture on the uneasy and often uncertain relationship between montage and collage. Using examples from Battleship Potemkin, Breathless, Personal Best and Jane Fonda: Workout, the talk will both describe and enact methods of productive collision, overlap, discontinuity on paper, in film, and variously in-between. My Life as a Man is published by Horses Think Press.

3:00 – 4:00 pmStories from Alphaville, by Kylie Gilchrist
Considering the extent to which information is currently available in digital and online form, what uses does the printed book have today? Mining cinematic representations of information-age dystopian futures and literary provocations for the subversive potential of independent bookstores and public libraries, Kylie Gilchrist advocates for browsing and print reading as critical to resisting social atomization and autonomization. Presented in the context of Gilchrist’s work with Art Resources Transfer, an organization dedicated to publishing and the free distribution of art books to public schools and libraries nationwide.

4:00 – 5:00 pmFragments of a failed bullet (A Bullet for Buñuel), by Rick Myers
A performative lecture drawing from artist Rick Myers’ activities between 2012 and 2013, which involved trying to invoke an effigy of the filmmaker Luis Buñuel using a reduced velocity lead-tipped bullet. A narrative unfolds via an archive of documents, photographs, correspondence, and ballistics testing data – recounting the artist’s attempt to commission the precise replica of a shirt worn by Buñuel (down to the creases); while seeking to persuade a ballistics lab who test for the U.S. military and the Secret Service, to create failed bullets on his behalf. Includes the first public screening of the video work, (A Bullet for Buñuel) Failed Drawing.

5:00 – 6:00 pmTECTONIC CRYSTAL HEALING, a performance by Johan Rosenmunthe
An unorthodox book launch performance by Johan Rosenmunthe in conjunction with the release of his first book, Tectonic (SPBH Editions). Tectonic Crystal Healing sits somewhere between a performance and a sculpture, and will see Rosenmunthe use stones and sound to engage members of the audience to create a source of healing powers at MOCA.

6:00 – 7:00 pmEmergency Index: An Annual Document of Performance Practice
Ugly Duckling Presse launches the third volume of Emergency Index, a radically horizontal compendium of performance documents from across genres and around the world. Come celebrate with editors Sophia Cleary and Yelena Gluzman as local artists re-interpret works documented in Vol. 3, including live performances by Angela Washko, Steve Chodoriwsky, GWC Investigators, Neha Choksi, and Am Schmidt.

SATURDAY, JANUARY 31

12:00 – 1:00 pmPongo’s Dream, by Melissa Huddleston and Benjamin Lord
Jan Tumlir will perform a reading of The Pongo’s Dream, a new illustrated storybook by artists Melissa Huddleston and Benjamin Lord. The book adapts a story first recorded in print in the 1960s by Peruvian novelist and ethnologist José María Arguedas. Well known in Latin America, the text is a barbed but ambiguous allegory of race, landscape, religion, colonialism, and revenge. The reading will be followed by a short presentation by the artists on the making of the book, and a conversation.

1:00 – 2:00 pmShut Up I’m Counting! screening and conversation with Felix Salut
Winner of the 2014 Walter Tiemann Prize, Shut Up I’m Counting! is a project that combines film, text and graphics. Specifically, how on earth did Tara and Ohio end up in this strange world, consisting mainly of symbols, systems and fragments? They look for the sign “X,” which is supposed to lead them to the WAYOUT. Guided by the Oracle that gives enigmatic directions, a turbulent adventure story evolves. Tara, who wants to grasp this world through combinations, is annoyed by Ohio, who has a number tic. In the form of a film script with 32 scenes, Felix Salut plays with different ways of translating a film into a book. The script and stills are assembled from typographical symbols, transforming the fictional story on paper into a film. Following the screening, Felix Salut will be signing the book at the RAM Publication booth located at #Q02. Presented by RAM and Spector Books.

2:00 – 3:00 pm
Lucas Blalock in conversation with Peradam
In conjunction with the publication of his Inside the White Cub (Peradam, 2014), New York-based artist Lucas Blalock will discuss with Peradam how he uses books to inform and shape his larger practice. Inside the White Cub is an ersatz version of a​n exhibition catalogue​ initially scheduled to be published by White Cube in 2012,​ as part of their Inside the White Cube series. ​Though the project was eventually abandoned​, the materials had already been assembled, and ​Blalock,​​ with Peradam,​ sought t​o re-imagine what was initially ​intended to be a sales tool.

SATURDAY, JANUARY 31 (cont’d)

3:00 – 4:00 pm
Portability = Power: On the run with the BOOKMOBILE project and Box of Books
Onya Hogan-Finlay and Darin Klein in conversation
In conjunction with the launch of The Bookmobile Book and Box of Books, Vol. VIII., Onya Hogan-Finlay and Darin Klein will discuss the influence of D.I.Y. communities and the production and distribution of independent publications from the early 2000s to the present. Through the lens of two related but distinct projects, the artists will present images and anecdotes of their work as independent curators. The projet MOBILIVRE-BOOKMOBILE project was a touring exhibition of artist books, zines and small press publications that toured North America in an Airstream trailer from 2001-2005. In Box of Books, Vol. VIII, 22 participants respond to specific instructions – each imparting their own unique perspective to create an edition of 150.

4:00 – 5:00 pm
Raphael Rubinstein reading The Miraculous
“Raphael Rubinstein … delivers a poetic vision for an art history of nameless personages, artists whose projects are described in detailed yet anonymous capsules. Less an exercise in alternative history-making than in alternative history-reading, The Miraculous is a virtuosic book, stripping an ostensibly traveled terrain of its coordinates of familiarity — name, brand, ego.” —Mustafa Heddaya. Presented by Paper Monument

5:00 – 6:00 pm

K-HOLE research presentation

REDCAT

K-HOLE is a trend forecasting group founded in 2010 by Gregory Fong, Sean Monahan, Emily Segal, Chris Sherron and Dena Yago – a group of artists, designers, brand strategists and writers. Using the specific language of the marketing and advertising industry, K-HOLE addresses how brand and consumer experiences are constructed, and explores the plausible limits of corporate and consumer strategy. It is at the core of the project that the reports circulate amongst both the art and marketing worlds, recognizing how information flows between both and elucidating how decisions are made at a large cultural scale.

For this event, K-HOLE presents their research leading to the group’s next report, which will address the current state of communication in America, looking from interpersonal messaging online to how we engage with broader scale social and political campaigns and activations.

12:00 – 1:00 pm
Sex Archive Show N’ Tell
Center for Sex and Culture’s Miss Ian (librarian) and Dorian Katz (gallery director) will be dishing the dirty on historical zines, sex-radical newsletters and other salacious publications from our archive. Based in San Francisco, CSC provides judgment-free education, arts events, library, archive, and other resources to audiences across the sexual and gender spectrum. At Sex Archive Show N’ Tell, we’re focusing on materials printed in the Bay Area during the 1970’s through the 1990’s– a time of significant culture-making and sex activism. Expect cheeky titles like Brat Attack (dyke BDSM), How to throw a jack-off party (1985), Urine Therapy (1989), Growing Pains (pan-sexual BDSM), the Penis is Mightier (men’s masturbation club), Diseased Pariah News (HIV+ & queer as in fuck you), Black Sheets: Kinky, Queer, Intelligent, Irreverent and other indelicate surprises.

1:00 – 2:00 pmRoad Rage & Ri Ri (Re) Vision, with Erin Jane Nelson and Tracy Jeanne Rosenthal
Erin Jane Nelson will present from “Road Rage”, an autobiographical essay exploring violence, class, privacy, and digital imagery through the lens of street photography. Erin will read from her hybrid writing with an accompanying slideshow of historical street photography and her own recent work. Tracy Jeanne Rosenthal will present her new book of experimental scholarship, ‘Ri Ri Revision: a score for Rihanna’s “S&M”‘. Presented by Publication Studio Oakland.

2:00 – 3:00 pm
Collage on the Page and in the Street: Richard Kraft in Conversation with Andrew Berardini.
Los Angeles artist Richard Kraft uses both public spaces (library aisles, sides of buses, city streets, cow pastures, abandoned air force bases) and the space of the page to disassemble the familiar and reconstruct a world in flux, rich with dark humor and revelatory nonsense. In this conversation, Kraft will discuss two current projects that span both kinds of spaces and employ the incongruities of collage: “One Hundred Walkers, West Hollywood” is a large-scale performance work that will take place in April and his forthcoming artist’s book Here Comes Kitty: A Comic Opera (Siglio, 2015). Presented by Siglio Press.

3:00 – 4:00 pm
Pedro Reyes: People’s United Nations (pUN) Library Readings
This program of readings is organized in conjunction with the opening of Hammer Projects: Pedro Reyes at the Hammer Museum, which features the artist’s project The People’s United Nations (pUN). pUN enlists regular citizens who are connected by family ties or by birth to the nations represented at the UN to engage in activities that seek to apply techniques from social psychology, theater, art, and conflict resolution to geopolitics. One component of the project is the pUN LIBRARY, an ongoing bibliography and collection of books that represents every nation-state in the world. Delegates are asked to choose one book they feel represents their country and ought to be known better in the rest of the world. Reyes, Hammer staff, volunteers, and current delegates for the upcoming pUN convening at the Hammer will read excerpts from the LIBRARY aloud. Members of the public are also invited to bring in their favorite book by an author of their home country and do a reading. Together, the readings will comprise a truly international library full of surprises for anyone interested in expanding their knowledge of the world.

4:00 – 5:00 pm
Offshore Finance, Bataille, Xenospace, Murder! by Triple Canopy with Bill Maurer
Triple Canopy celebrates the publication of Headless, a murder-mystery by the elusive author K. D., with a reading and a rumination on offshore finance and human sacrifice. Headless is a delirious romp through the world of offshore finance, conducted by a British ghostwriter who seems to have uncovered a sacrifice-obsessed, Bataille-inspired secret society of global economic elites who will do anything to maintain their power. Triple Canopy editors will be joined by Bill Maurer, a cultural anthropologist at UC Irvine whose research focuses on law, property, money, and finance, and on the technological infrastructures and social relations of exchange and payment.

CABC – Contemporary Artists’ Books ConferenceA dynamic, two-day program focused on emerging practices and debates within art-book culture. The Conference is organized by the CABC Committee, a national group of art library professionals. This year’s conference will take place in the Aratani Central Hall, located across the courtyard in one of the Japanese American National Museum’s buildings.Admission is free for all sessions, but space is limited. General admission is first-come-first-seated.The Conference is organized by the CABC Committee, a national group of art library professionals. Funding for the Conference is supported by generous donations from Gagosian Gallery, Blum & Poe, David Kordansky Gallery, and 356 Mission.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 30*

1:00 – 3:00 pmThe Evolving/Devolving Definitions of Punk, DIY, Indie, and Self Publishing
From the 1970s through the late 1990s, the terms Punk, DIY, Indie and Self-Publishing were strongly connected with various anti-establishment groups and movements. The words are now often used as aesthetic descriptors, frequently employed by institutions, organizations, and corporations that exist in direct opposition to their original definitions. This panel will discuss the evolution/devolution of these terms and the fields they describe.

4:00 – 6:00 pmIn the Archives
A conversation between artists who use publishing to rethink the meaning of archival materials. The internet has made saving and organizing information a routine activity. Through researching, collecting, and remembering these artists’ reenact the ways that knowledge previously circulated within subcultures. This session considers the relationship between history, politics, and the archive as both a site and resource for work.

*All CABC sessions take place in the Aratani Central Hall (111 North Central Ave) of the neighboring Japanese American National Museum

SATURDAY, JANUARY 31*

11:30 – 1:30 pmArtists’ Periodicals
Beginning with modernist little magazines, serial publications by artists have served as a vital collaborative and cross-disciplinary mode of transforming the artistic field. The genre has experienced explosive growth in recent years, and this multi-generational panel surveys some of the changes in a mode of production in which artists also must think as editors and curators, and in which time has as much a place as the page spread.

2:00 – 4:00 pm 1 Image 1 Minute
Presented with X-TRA and Project X. Fifty artists, curators, writers and members of the art-book community will give a one-minute lecture on a single image of their choosing. The resulting series of presentations offers an engaging survey of the way we interpret and relate to the static image. Based on Micol Hebron’s column in X-TRA, the concept was inspired by Agnès Varda’s television series Une minute pour une image (1983).

5:00 – 7:00 pm Keynote Speaker: Frances Stark
The L.A.-based artist Frances Stark will deliver this year’s keynote address. Stark’s practice draws on language in all its forms, from the literature of Robert Musil and Joan Didion to the culture of contemporary chat rooms and everything in between. Her work addresses popular culture, sexuality, the anxieties of being an artist, and the mechanisms of the art world, very often existing as both word and image, in the world of texts and the world of things. Not surprisingly, she is a prolific publisher of books.*All CABC sessions take place in the Aratani Central Hall (111 North Central Ave) of the neighboring Japanese American National Museum

Special Programming – Sotheby’s Institute of Art, ForYourArt, Book MachineLocated in the Democracy Forum of the Japanese American National Museum

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 1

11:00 – 1:00 pm
Sotheby’s Institute of Art presents:Why The F**k Should I Care About Copyright?Art law lawyers Sarah Conley Odenkirk (LA) and Kibum Kim (NY) will tell you why! Come listen to a short and sweet presentation on copyright basics. Both of these experienced attorneys have pretty much seen and heard it all when it comes to handling copyright issues for artists and creative people. Sarah has even written a book specifically for artists: A Surprisingly Interesting Book About Copyrights for Artists. Bring your questions . . . we’ve got answers!

ForYourArt invites LA artists to celebrate the great artist book tradition of John Baldessari and Edward Ruscha by bringing their favorite artist book. This celebration coincides wtih the launch of the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing’s LA Project, which called on artists Kathryn Andrews, Aaron Curry, Alex Israel, Matthew Monahan, Sterling Ruby, Ryan Trecartin, and Kaari Upson to make an artist book. Attendees will receive a free copy of the FYA Guide to Los Angeles with personal and satirical tours of the city made by the seven artists especially for the guide, as well as an interview with Jim Heimann, writer, historian, and executive editor at TASCHEN. Signed copies of the LA Project books, co-edited by Karen Marta and Brian Roettinger, will be available. Cookies will be served.

4:00 – 6:00 pm
BOOK MACHINE

BOOK MACHINE (Los Angeles) will engage a Final Jury at the end of the 2-day event where a panel of invited guests will be selecting their favorite book projects to present and discuss during this closing ceremony event.BOOK MACHINE is an ongoing initiative by onestar press connecting emerging graphic designers and public participants through the creation of books. Follow 20 talented CalArts designers alongside their public participants, as they work together to conceive, design and complete each book project (from start to finish) within 3.5 hour work sessions!

Located in the Aratani Central Hall of the Japanese American National Museum

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 1

1:30 – 3:00 pm
The View from Nowhere: Notes for an Art School
Facilitated by the Bruce High Quality Foundation University and other artist-educators. Organized by students of USC’s MFA/MA programs
Please join us in an open discussion in a time when Big Data has subordinated and branded the core event of every form of life and knowledge to its logic. Big Data has spawned a megalithic industry as well as academic and governmental devotion; it has also reoriented the compass of these fields not merely because of its grand epistemological claims, but because it is simply well-financed.

We can point to several spectacular, even some local instances of art academies giving in to these institutional shifts. We ask, then, what are the forms of reason and reading that favor complexity over our bodies’ imminent complicity to market demands? Once we’ve stolen everything and hightailed it from the university, what’s left of this [collectively-felt] space formerly known as Art School?

The past twenty years have seen a new generation of artists working together in small groups and large collectives to explore new ways of making art, design, performance, and activism. Francesco Spampinato, author of Come Together: The Rise of Cooperative Art and Design (Princeton Architectural Press), and some of the groups featured in his book, will be in conversation on motivations, logistics, and objectives that drive artists to give up their ego and embrace anonymous and shared endeavors. Borrowing strategies and symbols from mass media, the global market, and the entertainment industry, these collectives unravel power structures that lie behind political and social propaganda, and the construction of cultural products.

4:30 – 6:00 pm
Getting the High / Digging the Low with Ray Anthony Barrett, Ann Hirsch, Aurora Tang, Keith J Varadi, moderated by Sean J. Patrick Carney.
This discussion will examine the manner in which four individuals living and working in Los Angeles incorporate myriad elements from high and low culture into their own projects and critical frameworks. Moderated by New York-based concrete comedian and writer Sean J Patrick Carney, the participating artists and curators will discuss their influences ranging from contemporary art to pop culture to non-art disciplines. They’ll explore how these have shifted their practices in recent years, and the political and social paradoxes that have resulted from the globalization of images and ideas.

ExhibitionsThe LA Art Book Fair is pleased to host a variety of exhibitions at this year’s event. The varied exhibitions survey works by individuals significant to the artists’ book medium, as well as extensive group presentations.Printed Matter proudly presents an exhibition of Dorothy Iannone‘s artists’ books, with support from Air de Paris, Peres Projects and Siglio Press. Known most widely for her painting, text and video works that explore and reflect upon her time in Europe, Iannone’s work chronicles her experiences as an artist and her relationship with Dieter Roth. The American-born, Berlin-based artist is famous for her whimsical, colorful and, perhaps most importantly, explicit depictions of female sexuality – which have, since the 1960s, often fallen prey to censorship. This exhibition, first staged at NYABF14, is expanded for LAABF15, showcasing a selection of exhibition posters and ephemera alongside Iannone’s original artist books and printed works.Harper’s Books is delighted present the first west coast exhibition of new paintings by Irish artist Genieve Figgis. When Richard Prince discovered Ms. Figgis on Twitter in 2013, he could have scarcely predicted the overwhelming response to her work. With her liquescent psychedelic paintings, Ms. Figgis has struck gold in an art world dominated by decorative abstraction. Artforum ranked Figgis’ shows at Harper’s Books and Half Gallery the third best of 2014, and Roberta Smith of The New York Times gave Ms. Figgis a stellar review.

Boo-Hooray presents The Templetons: Books and Zines, a comprehensive overview of the printed work of Ed and Deanna Templeton, curated by Ed and Deanna Templeton, Clint Woodside/Deadbeat and Johan Kugelberg/Boo-Hooray. The Templetons have been publishing books and zines for a couple of decades; this is the first time they are gathered for display together with related artworks.

Boo-Hooray also presents Spot – The Sounds of Two Eyes Opening SoCal Beach Photography 1969 – 1981, is curated by Johan Kugelberg and Spot. The producer of Black Flag, Misfits, Minutemen etc. was a master photographer, his previously unseen pictures of beach culture and punk life in the 70s/80s are iconic, and have been recently celebrated in his first book.

Andrew Roth in association with PPP Editions will launch Punk In Print 1976-1980: The Complete Mott Collection, a 700 page, 3 volume limited edition. Since the early 1980’s Toby Mott has amassed a comprehensive collection of printed matter relating to the history of British Punk including posters, flyers, zines, tickets, badges and ephemera. Selections of the Mott collection have been exhibited internationally, now it may be referenced in its entirety with full color reproductions and an extensive index. Only 30 copies, the entire edition.

Archive Books, Berlin presents Book Exchange by Warren Neidich, a performative sculptural project thats mode of operation and purpose changes in each venue where it is displayed. For this occasion books authored and about Hollywood authors and actors suspected of being communists who were censored by the House Committee on Un-American Activities led by Joseph McCarthy were first bought off the internet and installed on the shelves of this rotating Modernist book case. During the fair visitors are asked to purchase a book from any vendor presenting with which to then make an exchange for one of the books found in the bookcase. It is hoped that by the end of the event all the books will have been distributed from the bookshelves to a heterogenous group of participants who will install them in bookshelves in their homes. Their act and participation refutes the essence of censorship which is to make unavailable to the general public certain forms of information. The bookshelf itself will contain the residue of the experience of the exchange as well as expressing the vast diversity of books being sold and exhibited at the fair. An Official Launch for the project will take place on Friday, January 30th, from 3:00 – 5:00pm.

XE(ROX) & PAPER + SCISSORS
A lively selection of international artists and zinesters that represent independent publishing at its most innovative and affordable, in the Geffen Contemporary building 4. A super-sized subsection of the LA Art Book Fair; (XE)ROX & PAPER + SCISSORS takes over the Geffen annex with more than 125 international artists, zinesters, and small presses, offering a survey of independent publishing at its most innovative and affordable.Select exhibitors include: 8 Ball Zines (New York City), Wild Life Press (UK), Bish Sports (Los Angeles), Drippy Bone (Los Angeles), among many others.

FRIENDLY FIRE
Artists and Activists converge in a selection where the political meets the personal, curated by Printed Matter’s Max Schumann.